by C L Walker
“I wouldn’t tease you about it. Geez, you’ve always been so secretive about your crushes. Like Elle in the seventh grade, you remember that?” He nodded his head. “I didn’t understand why you were crying that day when she started dating Henry, so you had to explain to me that you had liked her for three years! You didn’t tell me you had been crushing that hard and for that long until you were rejected! It was ridiculous.”
“I feel like if I say it out loud and it turns out badly then it will be more embarrassing.”
“Everyone gets rejected, it’s a part of life.” Even though I didn’t have the nerve to tell anyone how I felt either and I didn’t share my crushes with him. But that’s because I didn’t want him to encourage me to pursue them when it was better that I didn’t.
He nodded. “True.”
I stood up since lunch was about to be over. “We will talk about this when we aren’t at school, and I’ll see you later.”
“Bye, bestie.”
When I got to the trash can Micah was dumping the food off his tray, so I waited behind him as I shuffled from foot to foot. I should have waited from further away, but my mind had been on Sai’s predicament and I forgot to be diligent when it came to Micah.
He turned around as I stepped forward because I thought he would go straight out of the cafeteria and when we almost hit each other again he muttered, “Seriously.”
I tried to go left at the same time he went right and then we both went the other way.
“I’m not happy about this either,” I said.
“Just stop right there.” He put his hand out and when I obeyed, he walked past me without another word.
It embarrassed me to no end because he acted like he was the only one who was put out.
“Stupid, mean, arrogant, pain in my ass.” I glared at his back, but when he spun around and looked at me, I clamped my mouth shut and spun around so quickly the things on my tray started to slide off. I walked forward and awkwardly balanced it and managed to get everything to slide back the other way.
After I set it in the bin on top of the trash can I peered behind me to make sure he was gone. I was hopeful that he hadn’t seen me go circus style with my tray. He was talking to someone on the other side of the cafeteria and as soon as my eyes landed on him, he glanced up at me.
How does he do that! He always knows!
I finally left the cafeteria, and once again I walked away with my head down due to my embarrassment.
I had got in the habit of speed walking away to put distance between us and once I got around the corner, I slowed down but not soon enough. My teacher had seen me nearly running in the hallway, so her brows rose, and she gave me a look of warning before she held the door open and as I passed, she said my name in greeting.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Andrew,” I said sheepishly as I passed her.
It’s not as if I had been fully running, so I didn’t see what the big deal was. But it didn’t matter because I would never argue with a teacher or give them attitude, so I let it go.
I sat down in the front row and as I glanced around the room, I noted that most of the other students were on their smartphones.
I couldn’t relate, I didn’t have one. I was still using a flip phone, but I took pride in it because I paid for it myself and I could say with a straight face that I wasn’t addicted to my phone like it seemed many others were. But admittedly that might have been different if my phone could do the same things as theirs.
“Hey, Bodin.” Devin sat at the desk next to mine.
I had been taken aback on Monday when he had chosen to sit next to me because he was usually one to sit in the back and avoid interaction with the teachers.
“Hey…shoot what was your last name again?” I teased.
He always called me by my last name, in fact I couldn’t think of a single time he had called me by my first. It was an odd thing.
“Cortez,” he retorted with a goofy laugh, and he pushed his skater boy brown hair over to one side.
We had never been close so I couldn’t say for sure, but it seemed like he was happy most of the time. I always heard him laughing and making others laugh in return, and it was rare to see him without a smile on his face, it was nice.
“Are you going to the Spring Kick-off?” he asked quietly, since Ms. Andrew had entered the classroom after holding the door open so she could monitor the hallway activity.
The spring-Kick off was an annual party Jesse had been throwing at his house since we were in ninth grade, it had been dubbed the most important party of the year for four consecutive years.
“Do I ever?”
I thought of what Sai had said and considered what it would be like to hang out with Devin outside of school. He was nice but he was one of those people I wouldn’t even think of asking to hang out, even if I were the type to have a lot of friends.
Ms. Andrew cleared her throat as she clutched a ruler in her hand and lightly smacked it into her other palm repeatedly. With her bun pulled so tightly in the back, and her empire waist dress with the high collar on, she looked like a teacher from a time when that ruler might have been used as a means to get children to behave. Back when abuse was done in the open and it had another name, discipline.
She launched into a lecture about forms of measurement and conversions that I was surely going to forget. But I relaxed some when she said we would be allowed to use a conversion chart during the test.
Twenty or so minutes later I had my face squished up against my palm as I leaned on it and stared at the board when a piece of paper landed on my desk. I waited for her to turn her back once more to write something on the board to open it.
I know you never go, but it’s senior year, Bodin. Come party with us…or at least think about it. What’s the worst that can happen? ; )
-Cortez
I folded the paper up and stuck it in my pocket and considered his request.
I had been to a few small parties over the years when I had felt that I could slip out and be back in without my mother noticing. But I had never been to something big. It sounded like trouble because I knew the bigger the party, the higher the chance of something bad happening, and the cops could show up. She would end me if I got into that kind of trouble.
When the bell rang, I packed up my bag and noticed with a small amount of anxiety that Devin had waited for me.
We walked out of class together and he looked at me expectantly.
“Fine,” I said, “I will consider going but don’t count on it.”
“Awesome!” He got what he wanted so he smiled, and we went our separate ways.
I felt free at school most days, and because it was away from my mother, I genuinely enjoyed it and dreaded the summers. It was a shame that Micah was roaming the halls and getting in my way, because it changed the way school felt. I was so worried about him remembering me and I couldn’t avoid him, so school had also become a place of anxiety for me.
But anything was better than being at my mother’s, so I had to keep a positive attitude.
Which I lost hold of thirty seconds later when I walked through the door to fifth period at the same moment that Micah also walked through it from inside the classroom. We barely managed to turn our bodies sideways to avoid slamming into each other again, but it wasn’t enough to stop the back of my body from grazing against the front of his.
“Again?” he asked. “Three times in one damn day.”
My body figuratively lit on fire because of the contact and the embarrassment I felt over rubbing my ass across his thighs. Heat pooled in my belly as I clenched my teeth and willed my cheeks not to blush.
Of course, he had to complain about it as if he were the only one getting frustrated.
I was going to say something but when I turned around, he was gone so I shrugged it off and went to my seat.
The second bell rang, and he still hadn’t returned so I checked his desk to see if he had left his backpack behind, and he had.
&nbs
p; Mr. Burks handed out a worksheet and directed us to the chapter we needed to read to complete it, so I got to work.
Micah returned sometime later, and his eyes met mine as he walked down the aisle. I suddenly recalled the rush of emotions I had experienced when my body had been pressed up against his and with perfect clarity. It felt as if I were feeling it all over again.
Why do I feel like I could close my eyes and float away?
It made it difficult for me to look away, but I had to, so I put my head down and I tried to ignore what I was feeling.
I did my worksheet until I noticed in my peripheral vision that Micah had looked at me for a few seconds and then down at the floor by my desk.
He bent over towards me and I snapped my head to the side to look down at him as he reached for something. When he came back up our faces came far too close together before he quickly pulled away.
“What?” he hissed.
I shook my head and glanced up at Mr. Burks who was paying no attention to us, as he was so engrossed in what he was typing up on his computer.
Micah had begun to open something, and I didn’t realize until I started to turn away from him that it was probably the note Devin had thrown at me. The note I had suspiciously regarded because it seemed, if possible, that Devin had been flirting with me.
‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ Followed by a winky face… very suspicious.
Because of that thought I tried to grab it out of Micah’s hand, but he tipped his body away from me and shook his head.
“Are you crazy?” I asked. “Give it back!”
He held his finger up to his mouth and signaled for me to be quiet before he flattened the note out on his desk.
“You have some nerve! It’s mine, dummy,” I spat.
I didn’t know why I was having such a time of it; it didn’t really matter if he read it. I wasn’t even sure if Devin had been flirting. I didn’t see how he could possibly be interested in me when he had so many other girls to choose from. But either way it was none of Micah’s business.
I grabbed his forearm through his black long-sleeved shirt, he was warm beneath my fingertips even through the fabric and I relished the feel of him for a moment. Until his arm flexed, and he sent me a look that made me regret touching him.
I let my hand drop and he watched it the whole way down until it rested at my side once more, he regarded it as if it were a threat to him. I figured he must have found me repulsive; it was the only explanation for the serious look in his eyes.
I moved my attention back to the paper in front of me, but I couldn’t concentrate because he was staring at me.
“How does it feel?” he asked after an agonizing minute went by.
“What?”
“Having someone take your personal possessions?”
I started to drum my fingers on my desk, as it helped me to stay grounded because no matter how pathetic it was; the sound of his voice made me feel wild. A frenzy was working up inside of me with every word that he spoke, and I didn’t understand what was happening or why whatever it was, was threatening to swallow me whole.
It was unnatural, crazy.
There was something wrong with me.
I was panicking.
Why do I feel untethered?!
“Hey,” he said softly, and his soothing tone snapped me out of whatever dark place I had been fading into.
What the heck was that?
“Ahem, as I explained it was just a pen,” I said.
He held the note up in between two of his fingers. “And this is just a boys sad attempt to get a girl he likes drunk so he can get laid.”
I shook my head and started tapping my fingers faster until Tess turned in her seat and looked directly at my hand as if she meant to shoot laser beams at it.
I put it in my lap and clutched it with the other as I mouthed, “Sorry.”
Once she turned around my apologetic facial expression was quickly dropped and in its place was one of anger.
“Look,” I said, “he’s not trying to get me drunk and even if he is it wouldn’t matter because I am not going to that party.”
I’m not?
Right, it’s better that I don’t…
He gave me a strange look before he said, “I guess you won’t be needing this anymore seeing as how your mind is made up.” He tore the note in half as I watched with wide eyes.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Me? What’s wrong with you?” He turned in his seat even though the bell had rung as I stared at him without answering. “Why do you take everything so seriously?”
Did I take him too seriously?
Perhaps, but it was my note.
I had so many things I wished to say but his eyes held me in place.
There was something dark about him that no one else seemed to notice, and I felt it every time I looked at him and it scared me. So, even if I overreacted to what he said and did–which I was still unsure about–I didn’t think I was taking how he made me feel too seriously.
“I don’t know but you shouldn’t have done that, it wasn’t yours.” I grabbed my bag before I left the classroom as fast as I could.
I found myself running from him so often that it was unconceivable that one day I might run to him.
Five
Skylar
“Give it to me,” he said with a seductive tilt to his mouth.
I held my breath and backed away from him.
He took two steps forward and ate up the space between us once again.
“I don’t have what you’re looking for!” I screamed, but he couldn’t hear me because I did so without sound.
He pressed his body against mine.
“I said give it to me!” he roared, his face a mere inch above mine.
I tipped my head down to look at the floor below us that was moving like a steady stream.
I tried to shrink away from him but there was nowhere to go.
Suddenly a door materialized in front of us, and my mom stepped through waving a bottle in the air. “I always knew you were a whore!” She pointed her finger at me. “Look at the flush of your cheeks! You’re over there purring like a damn kitten!”
My hands flew to my face and I laid both palms against my heated cheeks, and I looked up into his eyes that were no longer brown.
They had become solid black, a liquid void that appeared to host a world all its own that threatened to swallow me hole.
“You’ll never win,” he said softly. “So, give it to me.”
“What?” I returned with equal softness, as I sought to tame the beast rather than rile him. “What do you want from me?”
“Just you,” he said, before he lowered his head and nuzzled my neck. “All of you, every delicious inch of flesh you have to offer.”
“Then have me,” I whimpered, before he plunged his teeth into my neck and drank from my body as my mother cheered him on in the background.
At one point in my life my vivid dreams had been an escape from an otherwise dreary reality but for the last few days that escape had become a nightmare.
My dreams were a series about all the different ways in which Micah could put me out of my misery. He killed me in every single one of them and I always wanted it in the end, and sometimes I even begged for it.
His presence was doing something to me that I couldn’t escape even when I slept. Something that made no sense.
I couldn’t help but be aware of him. I felt his presence as if it were a tangible thing. There was no escaping.
It was unnatural, the things that were happening to me.
He was haunting me, and he didn’t even realize it because I was nothing to him.
It was still driving me crazy because I didn’t know if he remembered me, and I had debated on whether I should work up the courage to ask him.
But the downside to asking was the possibility that he didn’t remember who I was, and that he might have forgotten all about that night by the creek. It wo
uld be just my luck if I reminded him of something he had long forgotten.
After I got out of the shower, I pulled out a shirt dress and put it on over stretch pants and paired it with flats and they were all black. I looked myself over in the mirror as I put my cross earrings in and decided it wasn’t bad.
But no matter how much effort I put into looking different, or how many people told me I was beautiful I couldn’t see it.
All I saw was her.
Mother…
Her coloring, her thick lips, her pale skin, and her large violet eyes.
I wished that I had looked more like my father, because where she was light, he was dark, and his eyes were small, but they shined with kindness. I couldn’t see him in my reflection, and it saddened me because some days I needed to be reminded of what warmth looked like.
When I finished getting ready, I stepped out of my room and smelled coffee, so that meant she was awake and possibly in a better mood than she had been in for weeks.
It was always like that when she was feeling better, days like that were rare occasions when she attempted to act normal. Basically, she wasn’t a monster all the time, just most of it. But that was part of her manipulation and no matter how she tried, a few good days sprinkled in with the rest served only to make things worse.
“Good morning, honey. I made pancakes,” she said merrily as I entered the kitchen, and I rolled my eyes at her sweet endearment.
She hadn’t apologized in a long time. But I knew that was as close to one as I was going to get. I hadn’t heard her say sorry since the first time she had hit me, because that was the moment our entire relationship shifted as she realized for the first time that I was the perfect outlet for her misery.
“Good morning, Mother.” I sat down to eat the stack of pancakes she had set before me.
She stood on the other side of the bar, took a sip of her coffee, and then smiled at me as I poured syrup over the pancakes that she was clearly proud of making.
She gazed at me as if she truly loved me, and to her credit she appeared to be a doting mother who was impressed by the mere sight of her daughter eating a meal.
My mother, the actress.
